William Hague’s ambition to rise to power as fast as his hero, William Pitt
the Younger, might have succeeded had it not been for the intervention of
Margaret Thatcher.

A memo released by the National
Archives shows how the Prime Minister blocked Mr Hague’s application, at
the age of 21, to become a special adviser at the Treasury.

The youthful political activist, who is now Foreign Secretary, had already
made a precocious speech to the Conservative Party Conference six years
earlier and was on his way to a career in Whitehall when Thatcher condemned
him with a flourish of her